Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to make a short contribution to this important debate on Senator Farrell's Defence Legislation Amendment (Woomera Prohibited Area) Bill 2013. This bill is principally a response to the recommendations of the final report of the review of the Woomera Prohibited Area in northern South Australia, my home state. The bill will essentially provide for the making of the Woomera Prohibited Area rules, which will include zones, amongst other things, which are to be demarcated within that area. It creates a permit system for access to and use by non-defence users of the WPA. It introduces offences and penalties for entering the Woomera Prohibited Area without permission and for failing to comply with the condition of a permit. It also provides for compensation for an acquisition of property from a person otherwise than on just terms that results from the operation of the new part VIB of the Defence Act.

As you would well know, Mr Acting Deputy President Fawcett, being a fellow South Australian, South Australia has a vast outback and Woomera is situated 480 kilometres away from Adelaide in the north-west pastoral region of South Australia. When I was growing up in South Australia, Woomera was always a very mysterious place in the far north of my state. As a young South Australian, I was always very interested in what went on in Woomera. It was the home of the WRE as it was back then—the Weapons Research Establishment—and I had many friends who grew up in Woomera. It was also home to people from overseas who came to use that facility for defence matters and testing of new technologies in the defence area. And since people have been able to visit the Woomera area, a lot of people have done so on the drive up to Darwin or elsewhere. It is an intriguing and interesting place and a key part of South Australia's history.

The area itself is unique in the world, a unique military testing range covering 124,000 square kilometres—that is equivalent to 1½ Scotlands. It comprises extensive lands north of the Indian Pacific Railway, from Maralinga in the south-west up to its north-west corner in the Great Victoria Desert, which stretches across the South Australian and Western Australian border; it runs across to Coober Pedy and west of Roxby Downs, and down to Woomera in the south-east. It is an enormous piece of land. The WPA is not only vast but it is also an area vital to the South Australian government. Not only is it used for testing by the Royal Australian Air Force but also parts of the WPA contain highly prospective mineral resources, including estimates of more than $35 billion in iron ore, gold and uranium. Additionally, the WPA encompasses significant amounts of the land of our traditional owners, and that is something that we have been mindful about in the creation of this bill.

To give the Senate a bit more background information regarding the bill: on 17 May 2010 the then Minister for Defence, Senator John Faulkner, announced a review into South Australia's Woomera Prohibited Area to make recommendations about the best use of the WPA in the national interest. It was known as the Hawke review and it looked at ways to free up that vast area of 124,000 square kilometres for uses other than defence testing and other defence work. The review's interim report of 5 November 2010 identified the requirements of the various WPA user groups, assessed the extent to which these requirements were being met and proposed mechanisms to support better coexistence. The review found that introducing a comprehensive range management framework would increase the use of the WPA in Australia's national interests by better balancing national security and economic interests. Public comment on the interim report was sought before recommendations were finalised for inclusion in the final report. So quite a comprehensive review was undertaken there.

This bill is extremely important to South Australia. A similar bill with the support of the coalition passed in the House of Representatives last year, and the Labor government at the time hoped to have the same support here from coalition senators, but the bill was referred off to the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee, which was not able to report back before the rising of the 43rd Parliament. Unfortunately, with the change of government we also saw a change of heart from the coalition, and the government of the day, while promising to reintroduce a bill to effect the recommendations of the review, still have not produced that bill. It has been up to my colleague Senator Farrell to step into the breach. He has worked very hard to get the government to proceed with legislation. He, like me, knows the importance of this to South Australia.

As we have heard in contributions from government senators in this debate, their view is that they will wait for their own bill. We could be waiting a very long time, and you have to ask why they are delaying either supporting Senator Farrell's bill or introducing their own bill. Are they trying to punish South Australia? I cannot think of any good reasons, and certainly the reasons they have given in their contributions to this debate do not stand up.

The bill that we are debating today seeks to build and implement the findings in the Hawke report. It establishes a framework that provides all non-defence users within the Woomera Prohibited Area and industry more generally with a level of certainty of defence activity in the area and allows users to make commercial decisions with some assurance as to when they will be requested to leave the area because of defence activity. That certainty is very important for business, as we know.

The framework re-establishes the primacy of the WPA as a national defence asset and sets up a coexistence scheme that allows access by non-defence users on a conditional basis. These conditions are intended to protect the safety of all users in the WPA and to ensure appropriate national security protections for an area used to test defence capability.

The WPA operated as a testing facility from 1947; and, since the 1980s, areas of the WPA were made increasingly available to non-defence users including the resources sector, Indigenous group activity, pastoralists and the South Australian state government. Use has varied and has included activities such as open mining, pastoral tourism, environmental resources research and other uses. Recommendations of the Hawke review found that, while defence should remain in control of access to the WPA, it should exercise this right in a way that seeks to maximise the opportunity for non-defence users to operate within this very important area.

Maximising the potential of the WPA will bring exponential economic benefits to my state of South Australia and to the nation more broadly. Therefore, the review also recommended that defence should set restrictions on access by reference to its testing and evaluation activity in the WPA, with industry then making commercial decisions based on restrictions set by defence. So it clarifies usage and the interaction between the usage of the different groups that can have access to this area to make the most of it.

The bill in discussion here today seeks to implement the review's recommendations relating to the management of access to the WPA through three geographic zones—the red, amber and green zones. Access to the red zone must not be given to new non-defence users, the one exception being for a geological survey conducted by the South Australian government in collaboration with Commonwealth agencies. Zoning and time-share arrangements are subject to a seven-yearly review to ensure continued maximisation of the national value of the WPA, and any amendments to the coexistence framework will be recommended by the WPA advisory board and approved by the Minister for Defence in consultation with the Premier of South Australia and Commonwealth ministers for the relevant portfolio areas. As recommended by the review, pastoralists with an existing presence, Indigenous groups and other existing users as well as existing mining operations in the WPA will continue to operate under their current access arrangements. The access regime established by this bill only applies to new users, with existing users having the option of voluntarily joining the access regime established by these measures.

Technicalities aside, the bill is about improving and maximising the accessibility of the WPA for the benefit of all South Australians as well as for the rest of the nation. It will have the potential to create jobs, which are very important in that area of South Australia, and it will have the potential to attract further research and exploration into the lands, possibly creating benefits far beyond what we can currently imagine.

But, of course, we will not be able to pass this legislation unless we have the support of the government to do it. Senator Farrell in his contribution to this debate made it quite clear that we on this side are willing to work with the government to do what needs to be done to get this legislation through the Senate. We understand how important it is to South Australia now in the immediate sense but also how important it could be in the future as well. So I am hoping today that my fellow South Australian senators—Senators Birmingham, Bernardi, Fawcett, Ruston and Edwards—will recognise and appreciate the benefits of this bill. We support it because, as South Australians, we need this bill to pass so that we can give the people who live in the fine state of South Australia the best possible opportunities for the future. I would like to thank Senator Farrell for introducing this bill and I commend it to the Senate.